Friday, September 21, 2012

Attention old school U-Con attendees: We have a special announcement about the Swords & Wizardry Whitebox demo. Thanks to John Reyst and the good folks at Frog God Games, there will be some Frog God giveaways for those at the Friday night Swords & Wizardry Demo! Come on down Friday October 26th and join us for some OSR goodness!

I would urge anyone in the vicinity of south eastern Michigan, who loves gaming to get up to U-Con the last weekend of October. As it happens, it looks like there will be a lot of old school goodness going on, and lots of fun, otherwise. The pre-reg is open and the hotel is taking reservations until October 10th. This looks to be a lot of fun. If you don't believe me, check out the events pages:

As it happens, I'm running the Castles & Crusades game at 2:00 P.M. I'm using this as a play test for my module, Fear of the Dark. I'll also be running the 7:00 P.M. Swords & Wizardry Whitebox demo game. The Tekumel presentation at 7:00 sounds interesting, unfortunately I won't be able to partake, since I'll be running at that time.

Start the morning off right with a session of Stars Without Number. I'm certain that's what I'll be doing over coffee. At 10:00, however, there is also a Tekumel game. I don't know which to play. Most likely SWN. Hmm, I must contemplate this on the Tree of Woe. Not much in the 2:00 slot, but there will be more Tekumel at 3:00. Again a question, do I play Mutant Future at 8:00, go to the Tekumel Foundation update or attend the Kickstarter panel? Time to get strapped back on the Tree of Woe. Also, I am debating on running a special "Halloween" themed game for VIPs in my room sometime Saturday evening (possibly Friday.) By VIP's I mean blog followers, OSR folks and personal friends. Find me a the con to get an invite. I have not yet decided what my VIP Halloween game will be. Also, I'm certain that Saturday night, parties will ensue.

Lucky for me I don't return to the GM seat until 2:00 P.M. Good on the Saturday night late games & party time. On the other hand, the random LL dungeon crawl is very intriguing and ends an hour before my first event! What's that at 2:00? That's right. The return of my Castles & Crusades version of S1: Tomb of Horrors! Come get some!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

So, the longer I ponder and design, the more I think that my "old school sorcerer" will be some old, some new. By that, I mean that my sorcerer will first be created for Castles & Crusades. I'm itching to write a C&C magic book with a few "new" or re-imagined arcane caster classes, a way of dropping in the schools of magic, witchcraft and some level of eldritch weirdness. As many of you know from reading my periodic updates (which are far behind) of my C&C Rappan Athuk campaign, C&C is my go to game at the moment. It is followed closely by Swords & Wizardry (along with OD&D and AD&D) but that is neither here nor there. In the end C&C is what I play the most at present, and the system that I love the most, at the moment. So, I suppose that what I do at this point is start writing the book and toss some bits at the Troll Lords to see what they think of it. If they don't want it, maybe they'll dig it enough to let me self publish on their system. Anyhow, since I've been toying with it for a while, even altering the character of Corian in the C&C Rappan Athuk campaign every couple of weeks to test out new things with him (players don't seem to notice yet) I figure that I'll start out with the C&C/Old School sorcerer. I'll get that class together, C&C style and post it here.

My principle idea is to make the sorcerer similar in fashion to the D20 version, but with an old school tone. That is, having a caster on par with the mu/wizard with the same pseudo Vancian casting style found in D20. Limited spells with spontaneous casting. One thing that I intend to remedy right away is the fact that the sorcerer, despite having spontaneous casting gets to cast more spells per day than the wizard. That has to go. The spells per day should be the same, or less. Despite having access to less spells, the sorcerer should not gain the benefit of casting more often. That is hogwash. Spontaneous casting itself is a great boon in a game where the core of magic is Vancian. Perhaps there might be an "advantage," in a seperate section of the book dealing with how to integrate the options like this from the Castle Keepers Guide, in which the sorcerer can attempt to retain a number of spells per day cast equal to it's level. Or perhaps this will be one of it's class abilities. These are just a few ideas that I'm toying with at the moment for the class. More will be posted when I get more work done on them. I soon hope to have a prototype of the class here for your reading/testing pleasure.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Well, Troll Lord Games is a step closer to getting out a product I have been looking forward to for quite some time. The product is now available for preorder on the TLG preorder site (which I have to admit, looks a bit savvy to me, being that it is pretty much their own personal crowdfunding page, or at least is set up that way.) The preorder is available in four different backing levels each with it's own rewards. The gist sounds pretty cool as a C&C fan, though it seems to make heavy use of the "Siege Engine" and thus would be a bit more difficult to back into any OSR products like LL or S&W. Still, I plan on getting a hold of it. You get all new rules for using runes along with a new class that specializes in them. I'm intrigued. You can preorder here.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Troll Lord Games is about to launch their new pulp fiction game "Amazing Adventures." I'm personally pretty stoked about this, being a Siege Engine fan, and a pulp fan. Here is a blurb from the site:

"Pulp SIEGE, the newest core game powered by Troll Lord Games’ celebrated SIEGE engine, allows you to create any type of pulp adventure hero you want, and customize them as you like! Be it arcane scholars, mentalists, tomb-raiding archaeologists, Asian martial arts masters, or gangsters and G-Men, this game has you covered. And best of all, if you’re a fan of Castles & Crusades, you can pick this game up and get playing in a matter of minutes! Inside this book you’ll find:

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The last weekend of October is going to be jam packed with awesomeness as dorkdom embarks in South East Michigan (Ypsilanti to be exact.) It is time once again for U-Con. This year I am proud to announce that U-Con is hosting a variety of OSR events in the RPG sector! Just look at what they already have:

If things work out well for me, I'll be running two Castles & Crusades games and a demo of Swords & Wizardry: White Box. But look at the other old school goodness here. We have Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, OD&D (I know it says "multiple editions" but I happen to know a guy who is bringing his Middle-Earth OD&D game here,) Stars Without Number and Tekumel! They also have Pathfinder and Savage worlds (though they are not here as of yet.

Despite all of this goodness the organizers need more GM's, and specifically are looking for people to GM certain games that have been requested by convention goers. You can view the list and link to submissions here. It would be pretty great someone was running CoC for this the weekend prior to Halloween. If I can get my hands on a copy, I might also run something horrid from LotFP, if possible, just based upon this weekend. However, I'm not sure that the con has a "nobody has any business playing this" rating (sorry Raggi, had to do it.) Anyhow, if you have any desire to run any of the listed games (or even one not listed) and can get to Ypsilanti for this weekend, I'm sure we're going to have a blast.

Friday, September 7, 2012

If you're interested in the how's and why's you can check here. Otherwise, get thee to a book store (brick and mortar) and buy a book today! At one time this applied only to new books. I would encourage you to support any local book store, though new books are better due to the author also getting their royalties.

Here is the schedule for Barbecon 2012. It should be fun. If Pathfinder is your thing it seems that lots of PFS events are going on. If your an OSR junkie like myself, I'll be running the Swords & Wizardry White Box Demo. I've noticed that there are many open game areas and I would be willing to run S&W WB pick up games as well. So come out, play some games and eat some BBQ!